NEIGHBOURS ON THE EVE OF THE
HOLOCAUST
POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS IN
SOVIET-OCCUPIED EASTERN POLAND, 1939-1941
Polish Jews Were Ecstatic When Russians
Occupied Poland
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The Targeting of Polish Officials and Civilians
Numerous testimonies attest to
the prominent role played by Jews in the militias and "revolutionary
committees"
that sprung up both
spontaneously and at Soviet urging. These entities often played a
decisive part in getting the new regime and its machinery of
repression off the ground. Their activities were buttressed by large
numbers of
individual collaborators acting on their own initiative in furtherance
of the Soviet cause.
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The
Bandits Took Charge
Throughout Eastern Poland,
local Jewish,
Belorussian and Ukrainian communists formed militias and
"revolutionary committees". With the blessing of the Soviet invaders,
they apprehended, robbed, and even murdered Polish officials,
policemen, teachers, politicians, community leaders, landowners, and
"colonists" (i.e. interwar settlers) - the so-called enemies of the
people. They also plundered and set fire to Polish property and
destroyed Polish national and religious monuments. Scores of murders
of individuals and groups have been recorded.
Robbery of Polish property
took on massive proportions with the spoils enriching the
collaborators' families and their communities.
One of the earliest and most hideous crimes was
the murder of almost as many as fifty Poles in the village of
Brzostowica Mala, near Grodno around September 20, before the Soviets
were installed in the area.
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Vicious Jews Killed A Polish Countess
A pro-communist band with red armbands and armed with blades and
axes, led by a Jewish trader
by the name of Ajzik, entered the village, dragged people out of their
houses screaming, and cruelly massacred the entire Polish population.
The victims included Count Antoni Wolkowicki and his wife Ludwika, his
brother-in-law Zygmunt Woynicz-Sianozecki, the county reeve and his
secretary, the accountant, the mailman, and the local teacher. The
victims of this orgy of violence were tortured, tied with barbed wire,
pummelled with sticks, forced to swallow quicklime, thrown into a
ditch and buried alive.
The paralyzed Countess
Ludwika Wolkowicka was dragged to the execution site by her hair. The
murder was ordered by Zak Motyl, a Jew who headed the "revolutionary
committee" - composed of Jews and Belorussians -
in Brzostowica Wielka.
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Typically, the culprits were never
punished. On the contrary, the NKVD officers praised them for their
"class-conscious" actions, and Ajzik was made the president of the local
cooperative. The racist aspect of the crime, however, is undeniable - only
members of the Polish minority perished at the hands of their non-Polish
neighbours.
Janusz Brochowicz-Lewinski, an officer cadet who attained the rank of
corporal in 1939, was captured by the Soviets near Stolpce. He was one of
fifteen Poles, among them a judge, a pastor, a chaplain, a teacher, and
several civil servants, taken before an NKVD tribunal in groups of five
and sentenced to death. Fortunately, his group managed to escape while
being transported to their unknown execution site. The other ten condemned
Poles were executed by firing squad.
Judges, Policemen, Teachers Were All Killed
While Brochowicz-Lewinski was imprisoned in
Stolpce, an NKVD
officer made the rounds in the company of his aide, a local Jew who
identified the members of the Polish educated class, now the so-called
enemies of the people, among whom he had lived for years, by their
occupation: judge, teacher, policeman, civil servant, forest-ranger,
landowner.
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Killed Catholic Priests
Equally despicable were
the murders of Catholic clergymen carried out by roving gangs of
Jews
and Belorussians
such as that of Rev.
Bronislaw Fedorowicz,
the pastor of
Skrundzie near Slonim,
and those of Rev.
Antoni Twardowski, pastor of Juraciszki, near Wolozyn, and the
latter's cleric, the Jesuit Stanislaw Zuziak.
A rabble of
pro-Soviet
Jews and Belorussians
came to apprehend Rev. Jozef Bajko,
the pastor of
Naliboki near Stolpce,
intending either to hand him over to the Soviet authorities or to
possibly lynch him (as had been done in
other localities). A large gathering of parishioners foiled these
plans, allowing Rev. Bajko to escape before the arrival of the NKVD.
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Henryk Poszwinski, the prewar mayor of
Zdzieciol, a town near Nowogrodek, described the new order in his
town:
... In Zdzieciol, a Jewish
woman by the name of Josielewicz stood at the head of the
revolutionary committee which was organized even before the arrival
of the Soviet army.
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Jews Executed Polish Police
The local police left town just after the Red
Army had crossed the border. On the evening of September 17, I was
informed that a band of criminals released from jail was getting ready
to rob some stores. I called a meeting of the fire brigade and
civilian guard and these two organizations began to provide security
in our town. The stores were spared but the [criminal] bands attacked
the defenceless civilians, who were escaping eastward from the
Germans. The culprits
stripped them of their clothes, shoes and anything else they had on
them. Those, who resisted, were cruelly killed on the spot. Outside
the town, roadside ditches were strewn with dead people.
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... The revolutionary committee, which soon disarmed
the fire brigade and civilian guard, stood by idly while all this was
taking place.
In the morning hours of September 18, a small detachment of the Polish
army still traversed Zdzieciol. It was a field hospital team transported
in a dozen or so horse-drawn carriages. The convoy consisted of thirty
soldiers led by a sergeant. The revolutionary committee attempted to stop
and disarm them. The soldiers discharged a volley of gunfire into the air.
The revolutionary committee ran out of town in a stampede and hid in the
thickets of the municipal cemetery.
... In the afternoon hours of September 18, the Soviet army entered
Nowogrodek. That evening the first three Soviet tanks arrived in Zdzieciol.
The entire revolutionary committee, headed by Josielewicz, came out to
greet the invaders shouting: 'Long live the great Stalin!' After a short
stop the tanks moved toward Slonim. The revolutionary committee ordered
owners to display red flags from their houses. The Poles cried like
children as they tore the white portion off the [white and red] Polish
flags.
... In the morning hours of September 19, a Jew from the revolutionary
committee came to the town hall and advised me that I was being summoned
by the committee to attend a meeting concerning an epidemic of
foot-and-mouth disease which had broken out among some cattle that had
been brought to Zdzieciol. Believing what I had been told to be true, I
immediately got up from my desk and accompanied that man to the
headquarters of the committee located at the other end of town. I had to
wait about an hour before I was taken to the chairwoman's office. During
that time I observed the true picture of the "revolution". Hundreds of
people surrounded the committee premises; most of them were women who had
broken out in tears and were wailing. 'Return our stolen property!' they
cried. 'Release our husbands and fathers of our children!'
... People who had been badly beaten occupied the
corners of the room; most of them were refugees fleeing the Germans. The
committee members, who were dressed in civilian clothes with red armbands
and had Soviet stars on their hats, carried rifles or revolvers in their
hands and competed with each other in brutally mistreating these people.
It was a sight that I had difficulty countenancing.
After about an hour's wait the door was thrown open and I was summoned
into the chairwoman's office. When I entered I noticed three rifle barrels
pointed at me. One of the bandits yelled, 'Hands up!' I raised my hands
and turned to the chairwoman. 'What have I done wrong? Why are you
treating me like this?' Although she knew Polish well, Josielewicz replied
in Russian, 'You will find out in due course'.
After being searched [and stripped of all my personal effects] I was
instructed to move toward the table occupied by Josielewicz, the
chairwoman, and by a Soviet NKVD officer. The officer removed a form from
his bag and started to complete it. ... The last portion of the form asked
for the reason for my arrest and imprisonment. Before filling it out, the
NKVD officer turned to the chairwoman and asked what to enter. The
chairwoman replied, 'He's a Polish officer, a Polish patriot, the former
mayor of the town. That's probably reason enough'. The NKVD officer wrote
in this portion: 'Dangerous element'.
After filling out this form, three committee members
escorted me to police detention. In a small detention room built to hold
no more than four people for a short period, there were twenty-three
people who had been arrested. Unable to sit down in that crowded place, we
had to stand one next to another the whole time. People fainted from lack
of air and had to relieve themselves on the spot.
Among those arrested were school
principals, county reeves, village administrators, officials and various
other people who had escaped eastward from
the Germans, as well as a priest who often repeated under his breath,
'Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do'.
We spent almost an entire day in this place of detention. Finally, on
September 20, we were put in a truck and taken to the jail in Nowogrodek.
During the entire journey, which lasted more than an hour, we were lying
on the floor of the truck used to transport coal while four Jews from the
revolutionary committee watched over us with rifles in their hands. Every
now and then one of them would warn us, 'Don't lift your heads, or you'll
get a bullet in your skull'.
Along the road over which the truck moved slowly we encountered in many
places Soviet artillery going in the opposite direction. Soviet soldiers
would approach our vehicle during the stops and ask, 'Who are you carrying
and where are you going?'
'We're taking Poles to the jail', the guards would answer.
'What have they done wrong?'
'They haven't done anything. It's enough that they're Poles!'
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From Clerk To Head Of The Militia
In Baranowicze, Jews filled
the ranks of the "red militia" and denounced Polish officers,
policemen, teachers, and government officials to the NKVD. At night
black box-like carriages arrived at the homes of these people. They
were loaded on, taken to the railway station, and deported to the
Gulag - never to be heard from again.
Among those arrested with the
assistance of local Jews, was the sister of Boguslaw J. Jedrzejec and
eight members of her family. Her husband and father were murdered by
the NKVD in Baranowicze; the rest of the family was deported to the
Soviet interior in the winter of 1939–1940.
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According to Nachum Alpert, in Slonim,
... A provisional city administration was organized in Slonim, headed by
Matvei Kolotov, a Jew from Minsk. ... Kolotov immediately began organizing
a "Workers Guard" (a temporary militia), whose function was to maintain
order in the city. Heading this Guard was Chaim Chomsky, a veteran
communist.
... And no sooner did the
NKVD arrive than it made
itself felt everywhere. First they deported merchants, manufacturers,
Polish officers and police; then Bundists,
Zionists, Trotskyites and Polish "colonists" and "kulaks" from the
villages. Many inncocent people were caught in this dragnet.
According to Polish sources, Chaim Chomsky (Chomski),
who took charge of the "revolutionary committee", issued a direction to
have the Polish mayor Bienskiewicz arrested when he reported to work on
September 18; afterwards, all traces of the mayor disappeared. A Jew,
soldier in the Polish army, who found himself in Slonim for a brief period
in September 1939 claims that the only Jews, who collaborated with the
Soviet invaders were long-time communists: ... I don't deny that there
were Jews - old-time communists - who disarmed Polish detachments, but
adds, quite correctly, ... but can one blame this on all the Jews?
In Dunilowicze, a small town near Postawy, a Jewish woman by the name of
Chana, led Soviet soldiers to the home of her neighbour, Jozef Obuchowski,
a sergeant of the Frontier Defence Corps. Pointing to his wife she said,
... This is a Polish 'Pani' ['lady' - the feminine of 'Pan'], her husband
is in the military.' The soldiers tore apart the house looking in vain for
her husband, the sergeant. The Polish woman was taken away instead. During
her interrogation, which lasted twenty-four hours, she was forced to keep
her hands raised and was drenched with water until she passed out.
Another Polish "Pani",
Mrs. Kwiatkowska,
was arrested by the Jewish Committee on her estate near the towns of
Wolozyn
and Wiszniew,
soon after the Soviet army passed through.
The de facto local authority rested with such groups which had sprung up
like mushrooms. It was they, who led the Soviet officials to their prey.
Mrs. Kwiatkowska endured Soviet prisons until the end of 1949.
Witold
Rozwadowski
and his father were arrested on their estate near
Kucewicze.
The former was held interned in
Oszmiana,
where he was murdered by a Jewish colleague, who had joined the Soviet
militia.
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In Oszmiana, They Became Kings
... The temporary authorities
consisted of Jews and communists ... who proclaimed themselves the
commissars of the town. Power was
exercised with the help of the militia consisting for the most part of
Jews and communists. The Jews and communists served the Bolsheviks
through denunciations out of spite and by betraying soldiers and
police out of uniform.
... The militia was the terror of the population because individual
militiamen competed with each other in their servility.
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In Nowa Wilejka,
... The positions of authority
were filled solely by Jews and Soviet citizens, who were very well
provided for in every respect by the Soviet authorities.
The latter
also oversaw the agitators, who had at their disposal Jews and local
riff-raff. The Soviet authorities issued the following directives:
agitation centres were established, the so-called agitpunkts, and a large
number of agitators, mostly Jews, were brought in from Soviet Russia.
They were ordered to hold meetings of the local
riff-raff with communist leanings, former prisoners and Jews in order to
prepare them to help out. They were ordered to hold meetings at which all
things Polish, the Polish system, and the Polish government were
criticized and condemned and Polish patriots were mocked. The public was
called on to denounce such people because they were dangerous for the
Soviets, to arrest them, and to deport them. The [Polish] public was not
receptive and even replied with a furor: 'what for?' All of these insults
and demands came from the mouths of Soviet agitators and Jews.
These meetings were generally compulsory and those who did not attend
faced repercussions.
Mass searches were carried out at the homes of former military men,
policemen and civil servants, and those people who were thought to be
harmful to the Soviet Union were arrested.
The searches and arrests all took place only at night; they were carried
out by the police which was always overseen by the NKVD. Hardly anyone
came out of such a search whole; someone from the entire family inevitably
fell victim to it. Very often during the searches they seized documents,
money, valuables, photographs of former military men and policemen, and
important papers, all of which simply disappeared. The searches were
entirely pro forma because these people were already judged (found guilty)
in advance, for the most part by the Jewish communists. After these people
were arrested examinations and investigations followed, and the most
incredible confessions were extracted from them as a result of all sorts
of repressions and torture. That was their sole and favourite goal - the
destruction and wreaking rage upon the Poles. In order to extract
additional information about those Poles who still enjoyed their freedom,
apart from formal investigations, Jewish communists were planted in prison
cells to investigate and to extract such information from their victims.
For example, one night a
group of Poles was arrested by local Jews overseen by the
NKVD.
The victims were then examined and investigated using "light torture"
methods such as hitting on the head, while it was covered with cardboard,
with the spine of a book or a heavy book or a rubber club.
After such investigations people walked around
half-dazed, lost consciousness briefly, or even lost their minds. Many of
my friends fell into this category, for example, Krawczyk, the headman of
the Polish state in Nowa Wilejka, Second Lieutenant Zygmunt Pioko, in the
active service of the Third Combat Battalion Wilno, also from Nowa Wilejka,
and many others. The former could not endure it and died; Piorko latter
suffered a nervous disorder of the brain and went insane.
... At this time they ordered the compulsory registration of the
population and the issuance of temporary identity documents or
attestations for which the population was afraid to go and show themselves
to the Soviet authorities, at whose side local Jews sat as clerks and
provided an opinion about every Pole, who came to register.
Many Poles resided there or hid without registering, which also increased
the number of those arrested and the new victims of torture.
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Vicious Little Demigods
After fulfilling all of the
orders of the Soviet authorities and packing part of the Polish
population into jail as a hostile element for the Soviets, they
quickly embarked on their next task, pre-election agitation, which
took place on a wide scale. A large
number of agitators were sent from Soviet Russia, and these gathered
the local riff-raff to help out, such as Jews and former prisoners,
not only political ones but also others. They started to convoke all
sorts of meetings, which were compulsory under threat.
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... On the scheduled meeting days agitators were
dispatched to workplaces. They called a break in the work or an earlier
quitting time and led everyone to the place, where the meeting was to take
place, advising them in advance that no one was to be missing.
... Meetings held on days off work ... or those announced by written
notices were doomed. ... only Jews and some poorly educated children came.
From Store Clerk To Local Commissar
.. Every meeting was graced
by a large cordon of uniformed and undercover police, as well as by
the local Jewish population. ... the agitators kept repeating
that they would take care of the resisters.
... The agitators and Jews
frequently raised all sorts of nonsense about General
Sikorski
[the leader of Poland's government-in-exile] and the former Polish
government. They said that one should get out of one's head the notion
that liberation would come from General
Sikorski
or from England or from anyone else. At this the Jews, agitators and
militia replied with applause. The [Polish] population sat there
silently without giving any signs of life.
A committee was set up to draw up electoral lists. For the most part
Jews were assigned to the committee; they went from house to house and
registered everyone eighteen and over. For example, to my wife's
parents came two Jewish women, accompanied by an agitator, a young Jew
from Wilno,
to register them.
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Jews Killed
And Then took Estates
... In order to win more people over to their side, they ordered the
redistribution of land seized from [Polish] settlers and wealthy
landholders to labourers, poor farmers and Jews ... Only the Jews
willingly took the land given to them ...
Premises were designated, the city was divided
up into regions and an electoral committee was struck. The electoral
committee consisted mainly of Jews, some members of the local
riff-raff and Soviet agitators, many of whom were Jews too.
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From Students To Election Supervisors
The polling stations were
manned by Jews, the families of Soviet agitators, and others. The
elections got underway. The mood of the [Polish] population was
gloomy. The polling stations were full of Soviet agitators,
politruks
[political commissars], uniformed and undercover police, as well as
Jews and NKVD.
A large number of Soviet soldiers and
automobiles were assigned to help out.
[Because many Poles were evading] ... late in the evening the
agitators, Soviet soldiers,
NKVD
and Jews set out in automobiles to collect eligible voters from their
homes and drive them to cast their votes.
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... ...
Up until the last moment they did not inform us
officially of the fact that there was a plebiscite and the actual purpose
of the voting [namely, to sanction the incorporation of seized Polish
territory into the Soviet Union - M.P.], thus everyone [i.e. the Poles]
considered this to be a big joke, because voting for unknown people and
unknown purposes was absurd. Even though it was forbidden to cross things
off or to make changes on the ballots, there was a lot of crossing out.
Any voter who made some inappropriate gesture with his ballot was observed
and noted by the agitators.
... A few weeks after the elections, searches, arrests, repressions and
torture recommenced again on a large scale, as well as the deportation of
the Polish population to the so-called polar bear country.
A Polish woman recalls how the
shopkeeper Rumkowa's
son, her Jewish neighbours
who knew the townspeople well, helped the Soviets round up and arrest
targeted Poles in Nowa
Wilejka.
When the Germans arrived in 1941 and the Lithuanian
police started to harass the Jews, this same Jewish shopkeeper bemoaned
what was happening to the Jews. The Polish woman then reminded the
shopkeeper of how her own son had behaved when the Bolsheviks arrived.
Embarrassed, the Jewish woman hung her head in silence.
In Bialystok, the NKVD
utilized the members of the largely Jewish "citizens' committee", which
was formed before the entry of the Red Army, to create a "workers'
militia" armed with weapons confiscated from Polish soldiers. The militia
carried out huge numbers of searches in Polish homes. As
one witness reports: ... They looked for weapons in every nook and cranny.
If they found anything made of gold, such as rings and bracelets, they
took it for their own use, and if one offered resistance, they were
threatened with death.
A pro-communist committee made of
Jews, which was led by
Awraam
Laznik,
seized control of the town of
Sokolka,
north of Bialystok. The "red militia", composed of local Jews (many of
them Bund members, and an aggressive cobbler by the name of Goldacki) and
headed by Szymon Aszkiewicz, a reserve officer of the Polish army,
arrested many Polish officials and prominent local Poles and executed
three Polish policemen. They conducted numerous raids, looking for arms
and seizing radio receivers and photo cameras. A
Jewish blacksmith named Abel
Labedych
shot a Polish policeman in the nearby village
of Bogusze, on September 24.
A head forester named Labecki was summoned to a Soviet post established in
the town of Sokolka. He was kicked and beaten by armed Jews wearing red
armbands. Devastated by this brutal treatment he took his life by throwing
himself under a train. His wife and six-year-old son were deported to
Irkutsk in the winter in 1940.
Stefan Kurowski had better luck when he was stopped on his bicycle on a
highway on the outskirts of Lapy, west of Bialystok, by a Jewish
militiaman. Fanatically consumed by his new role, this young Jew burst
into a long tirade against the "Pan's" Poland, whose "oppression" of the
Jews he was now avenging as an enforcer of Soviet authority. Having nearly
fallen into a trance as a result of his political agitation, this
militiaman, less aggressive and brutal than most, seemed to have forgotten
why he had stopped Kurowski in the first place and allowed him to continue
on his way.
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Yesterday He Worked As A Clerk At A Butcher Shop
Today he is a party
official filling out deportation orders on his Polish neighbors.
While their military incompetence was also
commented on by others, the
local Jewish militia later
proved to be an extremely useful tool for the Soviet occupiers in
carrying out tasks such as stealing the church bell and preparing
lists of Poles for deportation.
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Aleksander Gawrychowski, the former township
administrator (wojt), was seized from his home in the small town of Wizna,
near Lomza, by Jewish militiamen at the beginning of October 1939 on
charges of being an armed supporter of the Polish authorities. More
arrests and interrogations of alleged Polish conspirators took place the
next day: Jerzy Blum, Stanislaw Drozdowski, Jan Kadlubowski, Piotr
Nitkiewicz and Stanislaw Gawrychowski. Among the interrogators were the
brothers Chaim and Avigdor Czapnicki, prewar Zionists. Other Jewish
militiamen from this small locality included: Abraham Birger, Lejzor
Kiwajko, Kalmaniewicz, and Chaim Wegierko.
In Suprasl, according to a Jewish source,
... Some of the Jews, including Toleh Kagan, Baruch Gamzu and even Arke
Rabinowitz, the Rabbi's son received permission to carry arms. ... One
day, Issar, the decorator's son Itzik, burst into the priest's house with
a gun and stole a radio.
In Polesia, Count Henryk Skirmunt and his sister left their manor house in
Molodow near Drohiczyn Poleski on September 17, hoping to escape the
Soviets. When passing through the nearby Jewish hamlet of Motol, their
automobile was stopped and they were detained by a group of Jewish
communist sympathizers. Not only did their Jewish neighbours fail to come
to their assistance, but they prevented their escape. Shortly thereafter
both of them were executed.
A Polish high school student from Brzesc nad Bugiem (Brest Litovsk)
recalled:
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Jews Formed Militias
The Germans first occupied Brzesc on September 15, 1939, but
already by the end of the month the
Red Army entered, greeted
enthusiastically by the Jewish community with bread and salt and
flowers ... From that time we Poles often heard slurs and threats
directed against us ...
I will never forget the sight
of a Polish policeman, led in handcuffs by policemen along Jagiellonska
Street, who was surrounded by Jews howling and spitting at him,
throwing rubbish and stones at him, and disparaging him cruelly.
The Jewish militia seized the
brother of Feliks
Starosielec
from his high school in
Brzesc.
He was arrested, charged and promptly executed. A Polish woman and her
young daughter were shot and robbed by a mixed Jewish-Ukrainian patrol
in the village of
Wolynka, near the
railway line to Wlodawa.
In Janow Poleski,
Stanislaw
Doliwa-Falkowski, a landowner, was sheltered by friendly Jews only to
be apprehended and
executed by the local "red militia", composed largely of Jews.
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...According to a Jewish source, in Pinsk, Basey
Giler, a Jewish member of the Communist Party, recognized the Polish
Minister of Justice, Czeslaw Michalowski, and pointed him out to the
"workers' guard", who promptly arrested him.
The reaction of the Jewish population to the fate of Polish officials is
described by Julius Margolin:
... First, the officials of the original Polish government disappeared
before our eyes. Nobody was concerned, however, and I doubt if a second
thought was given to their fate. Yet the method at work, typically
Bolshevik, required not merely their dismissal, but their liquidation in
toto. Thus they disappeared without leaving a trace.
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Jews
Killed Town Officials
In
Sarny
(Volhynia),
local Jews armed with handguns, accompanied by a few Soviet soldiers,
marched Polish town officials in groups of five to their place of
execution in a nearby forest. During the ordeal the Jews spat
at the policemen and called them derogatory names.
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A Jew by the name of Herszko from Jagodzin, near
Luboml, warned a Pole, he knew: 'You, Poles, are already all in a sack;
all that remains to be done is to tie it up'. At the beginning of October
1939, a telegram was dispatched to Stalin, signed by 70 Jews from Luboml,
thanking the Soviet dictator for "liberating" Volhynia and beseeching him
to hold them close to his heart.
In Jaroslawicze near Luck,
... It started with individual
cases — arrests and disappearances, especially of Poles. Great help and
great zeal in making all sorts of denunciations to the
NKVD
was shown by the Jews.
The predominantly Jewish communist militia seized
control of the town of Luck on September 18th and killed a Polish
policeman. A Polish officer who had taken refuge in that city was
fortunate enough to escape from the clutches of the Jewish militiaman who
had attempted to arrest him on the street.
Other Polish soldiers were not so lucky. As Herman Kruk recalls:
... The day after the entry of the Bolsheviks, groups of the new militia
disarmed Polish soldiers. A
Jewish fellow stopped a high profile Polish officer and challenged him to
give him his weapon. The officer gave his
revolver, which he carried on his belt. Finally, the young militiaman
began removing the medals from the officer. The officer complained that he
couldn't take them from him. The fellow threatened him with the rifle. The
officer then took another revolver out of a holster and shot the
militiaman on the spot. The officer was arrested.
The officer in question was doubtless executed
summarily by the Soviets, as was their practice. There is no question,
however, except perhaps for a die-hard communist or an ardent Jewish
nationalist, as to who was the hero and who was the traitor in this
black-and-white scenario. Once the Soviets were installed, Polish
officials were brought before a field court-martial at which a
College
Students Become Judge And Jury
Jewish law student by the
name of Ettinger, the commander of the Workers' Guard, acted as the
local adviser. Proffering opinions about those marked for execution,
Ettinger in effect sealed their fate
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In Berezno:
... The many Ukrainians and members of the
Jewish poorer classes who
spontaneously greeted the Red Army soldiers started to show their enmity
toward the Poles, who were in the minority.
They searched for Polish officials and civil servants and for escapees
from the western and central regions who had sought refuge from the
Germans, and pointed them out to the NKVD.
Massive arrests of those fingered
and deportations followed.
In Dubno, on September 17, local Jews spontaneously
formed a militia which apprehended the reeve, Bartlomiej Poliszczuk, a
Ukrainian who loyally fulfilled his duties to the Polish State. He was
eventually handed over to the Soviets - never to be heard from again (his
name has appeared on a list of executed Polish officials released by the
Russian authorities). \
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The Hidden Fifth Column
Not realizing how efficient their
Jewish fifth column
was, a few days later the NKVD came looking for Poliszczuk at his
home; his name had been put on a list, prepared by local communists,
of Polish officials earmarked for arrest.
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In Krzemieniec, a self-styled Jewish militia
disarmed the citizens' guard formed by students from the lyceum. A Pole
from Krzemieniec recalled:
... When I went out on the streets that day, numerous patrol units,
militiamen composed of Jews, were circling the streets. They walked about
with red armbands and guns, searching whoever
they encountered. There were few Soviet troops. Only in the days that
followed did the Soviet divisions march through the city.
The events and mood in Krzemieniec were vividly captured in the memoirs of
Janina Sulkowska, the daughter of the county secretary, Jan Sulkowski,
whose ultimate fate is described later on.
Militias Use Students
.. The Poles watched the
Soviet invaders with a
mixture of revulsion and fear. Not a few of us cried. But as disconcerting
was the emergence of a local
Jewish militia which was friendly to the Red Army and had made its
appearance even before the enemy had marched in. Armed and organized its
first task was to arrest the students and Boy Scouts who had been posted
as guards and who carried old carbines in some cases taller than them. The
Jews roughed up the shocked youngsters who had considered their captors as
friends and classmates, before turning them over to the Soviets from whom
they had prior directions. What was the fate of those young Poles? In many
cases torture and death. This Jewish militia would help carry out the
Soviet's dirty work during their occupation.
My family would fall victim to
them.
Children Turned In Their Teachers
In town, Jews and
Ukrainians were cheering and ingratiating themselves with the Soviets.
I recognized many
neighbours and
acquaintances among those who were now jostling Poles and eyeing their
property for future theft.
Jewish men offered gifts to
the Russians while their wives and daughters kissed their tanks.
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Among this rabble were criminals released from
jail by the Soviets to create mayhem. They were all emboldened by posters
that had suddenly appeared urging various groups to attack Poles with axes
and scythes. And the Soviet officers indicated they would not stand in the
way of slaughter which was already turning the countryside red with the
blood of the Polish minority outnumbered by Ukrainians and Jews.
On that day I had my first encounter with a
swaggering group of traitors
attired in leather jackets, red armbands or sashes, stolen pistols, and
hatred in their eyes. I beheld a number of classmates among them,
including girlfriends. These mostly young Jews, often well-educated and
from rich or religious families, now addressed everyone as "comrade". One
of them gestured a slash across the throat at me. Their love for communism
and Joseph Stalin would know no bounds—especially human sacrifice.
'
They were much worse than the
blackmailers and denouncers, who emerged in great numbers among the
Jews and who were interested in
the goods and jobs of their Polish victims.
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From Gutter Rats To Kings
Starting as
communist sympathizers who flocked to the militia or acted as
informers,
these political types would soon graduate into
"agitators", administrators and even
sadistic interrogators for the Soviets as they filled positions in the
new order.
A knowledge of the language
and the local scene, combined with their fanaticism, would be
essential to the NKVD's reign of terror; they eagerly compiled lists
and arrested Poles—and
Jews, whom they considered to be enemies of the state. They were the
ones who on horseback would chase my father down the main street like
an animal, to act as interpreter for their torture victims.
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A sizable minority of Polish Jews from all levels
collaborated, usually passively but often actively, with the Soviet
occupiers in their liquidation of Poles in eastern Poland in 1939–1941.
For many, including my kin, the last sight they had of Poland or of their
loved ones, was a cattle train bound for Siberia - and a Jew or a
Ukrainian, or both, with a rifle on every wagon.
The Jewish militia from the Jewish village of Osowa and the Ukrainian
militia from Mydzk, the harbingers of the new Soviet order, wasted no time
descending on the Polish settlement of Ozgowo and others near Huta
Stepanska to carry out arrests of targeted Poles. The attitude of the
Jewish population changed overnight in Katy near Krzemieniec.
The better goods were hidden away
in their shops and they became "vulgar and insulting" toward Poles.
They openly ridiculed the Polish government and social institutions, and
made life difficult for the Poles.
... Young Jews entered the militia and in that
capacity came to our village and beat up some officer trainees (Romek
Kucharski and others) for their alleged crimes (as former members of the
Officers' Training Corps "Strzelec").
In Rowne:
... In the newly formed militia, which engaged members of the local
population, there were very many Jews. Undoubtedly the auxiliary apparatus
of the NKVD, and thus agents of all kinds, also took in many of them.
The local population - Jews and
Ukrainians - helped the Soviets a great deal ... They chased down Polish
patriots and handed them over to the
NKVD.
According to a Jewish witness,
... The day after the entry of the Soviet army into Rowne, ... enraged
mobs recruited from those elements, who were always ready to loot ...
began to demand that the "exploiters", bourgeoisie and local "Pans" be
punished. Armed with weapons and sticks they started to drag the guilty
out of offices, stores and private houses. The first victims were
employees of the courts, the public prosecutor's office and the police.
They were led down the middle of the street under the barrel of rifles,
surrounded from all sides and accompanied by a shower of profanities.
Apparently this was supposed to be the revolutionary element of the
oppressed national minorities of the Ukraine. On the sidewalks one could
see functionaries discretely maintaining order.
The following day, the revolutionary element of armed civilians vanished
imperceptibly from the streets of the city, and in their place appeared
the organs of order ... Thus began the systematic and precisely planned
process of plucking out from society those people who were recognized as
enemies of the Soviet regime.
Among the many Polish officials arrested in Rowne were: Dezydery
Smoczkiewicz, a deputy to the Seym (Poland's Parliament), murdered in the
Spring of 1940 by the Soviets in Kharkov; Tadeusz Dworakowski, a former
senator; five judges of the District Court; and the deputy prosecutor. All
of them were later murdered. Two assistant prosecutors were also arrested.
One of the principal denouncers was an articling student, the son of a
well-to-do local Jewish family. These harsh measures did not dampen the
enthusiasm of young Jews for the Soviet regime: whenever a picture of
Stalin appeared on the screen in the local cinema they stood and howled
ecstatically.
In Aleksandria, near Rowne, Jews and Ukrainians formed a militia and
disarmed the Polish police in anticipation of the arrival of the Soviets.
The militia also invaded the estate of Prince Lubomirski, who was
executed. In Wlodzimierz Wolynski, local communists and Jews were quick to
denounce local officials, who soon disappeared without a trace.
A young Pole, who was apprehended in Rozyszcze on September 24, when he
tried to obtain a pass to Kowel described his encounter with his
interrogator as follows:
... The whole thing became complicated when we were taken before the
commissar himself. He was a young Jew with a red star in his lapel. He
started a regular interrogation ... that I was surely a student, I surely
belonged to the ONR [National-Radical Camp], had beaten Jews, etc.
In Huta Pieniacka near Zborow, a self-styled militia consisting of four
Ukrainians and two Jews took over the police station and post office. They
donned red armbands and carried out arrests in anticipation of the arrival
of the Soviets.
Hangings In The Town Square
A militia, consisting
mostly of Jews, soon appeared on the streets of
Tarnopol.
Dressed in Polish military coats and armed with Polish rifles, they
entered homes searching for those who were now wanted by the new
"authorities". The jails were filled and executions abounded:
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... While descending to the first floor level, we
saw five Polish officers being led by Soviet soldiers out of an unrented,
unfurnished apartment, where the officers had slept the night before. We
followed them to the street.
... A few moments later, we saw the five officers lined up against the
wall of a small white house under the bridge and shot dead by an impromptu
firing squad.
... Two Polish uniformed railroad
men escorted by the Soviets passed us, followed by two escorted mail
carriers. Seconds later, we heard a volley of shots. All were executed on
the same spot where the five officers had been executed.
A Polish official (a former mayor of Lodz), a socialist, who had found
temporary refuge in the home of a local Jewish doctor, recalled:
... At that time the communists fulfilled the most shameful role.
They not only formed a "fifth
column", but also were the veritable right hand of the
NKVD
in their war against the socialists and Polish political activists.
They especially denounced members of the Polish Socialist Party and Bund.
Alarmed by the arrests that had begun in town, after about a week our
hosts advised us to go to some smaller county town, where it would be
easier to hide out for a time.
When pro-Soviet Jews spread rumours that Polish officers shot at Soviet
soldiers from the bell tower of the Dominican church in Tarnopol, the
Soviets opened fire and set the church ablaze causing serious damage to
the building and its contents. Clergy from the monastery were arrested and
almost shot as a result of this false denunciation. Upon examination,
however, the tower was found to be locked shut and there was no trace of
any activity there. The Soviets, nevertheless, encouraged townspeople to
plunder the monastery.
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They Emerged Like Dormant Locust
On
the eve of the Soviet invasion,
armed Jews attacked the
railway workers in
Stanislawow
in order to seize control of the train station. When the Soviets
arrived in the city, Jewish houses were decorated with red flags and
banners bearing slogans like "Long Live Wise Stalin".
A militia, made up mostly
of Jews and Ukrainians, patrolled the town.
Leon
Rosenthal, the chief of the "red militia", was particularly active in
carrying out arrests of Poles. Local Jews staged a mobile show with
effigies mocking prewar Polish leaders. The spectacle attracted a
large Jewish rabble which chanted anti-Polish slogans.
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In nearby
Dolina,
the NKVD,
accompanied by two local Jews known to the Poles, descended on a home to
arrest young Polish, men who belonged to Polish patriotic organizations.
One of the young Poles was killed in the local jail; the others were
deported to Siberia.
Tadeusz Hajda, a teacher of Polish at the King
Kazimierz Jagiellonczyk High School in Kolomyja, was arrested by Jewish
collaborators and handed over to the NKVD shortly after the entry of the
Soviets. Luck was with him - he was freed from prison because of a
petition signed by Poles, Ukrainians and German colonists, though banished
to a remote village school.
In Przemysl, Poles - employees - came to the assistance of their Jewish
employer. His daughter recalled:
... They [the Soviets] considered us to be "bourgeoisie" and therefore
bad. ... They had taken everything we had. Everything the Germans left the
Russians took.
... They arrested my father and then they released him. They emptied our
house. We had three Polish employees at the store. They wrote the Russians
that my father was a good employer and wanted to continue to work for him.
My father wrote that he would give the store to the government, if he
could stay on as manager. ... And the Russians did not want a bourgeois
running the store.
Not infrequent acts of solidarity such as this belie the much repeated and
exaggerated claim of open hostility among these various groups in interwar
Poland.
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In Kalusz, the invading Soviet army was greeted boisterously
Entire throngs of the Jewish
community, who called out [in Russian], 'Our people are coming'. They
bore red armbands on their sleeves and bountiful bouquets of flowers
which they threw on the vehicles; they embraced the tanks with their
bodies. And these were Jews, who we knew had property and shops ...
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Polish children began to be discriminated against by Jewish children, who
yelled: 'Oy vey, where's your Poland?' The sons of our Jewish neighbours,
Itzek and Munio Haber, called to us: 'Look, look. Sigit, sigit. A Polish
officer is riding on his white horse'.
And thus immediately began the cleansing of the Polish population.
Jews with red armbands, as
representatives of the authorities, started to liquidate the Polish
police, post offices, and above all took care of the military officers and
soldiers. The officers were deported; those
who defended themselves were shot. Polish soldiers, who tried to escape to
Romania over the Carpathians were killed.
In Gwozdziec,
... Jews and Ukrainians decorated the bridge to the
town to greet the Red Army. They flocked to meetings organized by the
Soviets to slander the Poles and flooded the Soviet authorities with
denunciations of all sorts.
Communist fighting squads composed of Jews and Ukrainians roamed
the streets terrorizing the Polish population and entered the Catholic
church to search for arms.
A
Jewish mob set upon and beat a Polish woman as she left church and
screamed at her: '... Your time is over; ours is just beginning. Stop
praying here'.
A few days later, at night, a group of masked Poles
met up with the Jewish hoodlums in some dark alleys and gave them a good
thrashing. Jewish harassment subsided somewhat after that.
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When three Soviet tanks from Kolomyja
descended on a company of Polish State Police and border guards in
Delatyn, local Jews and some Ukrainians helped to disarm the Poles.
In Sambor, the Jews who
entered the Red militia roamed the town searching for Polish
officials. Many of them were arrested and executed. Those
who managed to hide out for a time, like police commissioner Wojciech
Bryl (murdered by the Soviets in the Spring of 1940 in Tver/Kalinin)
from Horodenka, were denounced by local Jews and Ukrainian
nationalists.
Jewish and Ukrainian communists hunted down Polish policemen and civil
servants in Bobrka and handed them over to the NKVD. Szklanny,
department commander of the Polish State Police, was murdered near the
brickyard by the NKVD and two Jewish communists, Kahane from
Podhorodyszcze and Rod Majorek from Bobrka.
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In
Drohobycz,
the local militia, made up mostly of Jews, carried out inspections and
drew up lists of those to be arrested and deported.
Together with the NKVD
they arrested Bronislaw Naja
(mureded
by the Soviets in the Spring of 1940 in Tver/Kalinin),
the commander of the Polish State Police in the nearby village of Schodnica.
Abraham Sterzer, a Jewish doctor from Lwow, recalled:
... When the Red Army marched into
[Eastern Galicia], the Jews behaved as if Messiah had arrived. They
flocked to sign up for various communist-front organizations, joined the
NKVD
secret police.
On September 26, Leon Kozlowski, a former minister
in the Polish government, was taken by Soviet officers from the museum on
Plac Mariacki, where he was installed temporarily, to the NKVD premises on
Sapieha Street.
... The officers, who arrested me, engaged me in a conversation, a sort of
interrogation, and stated that people like me, enemies of the people, the
Soviet system destroys and puts out of action. One of them pointed out
that he was a Jew and that I should remember well that it was a Jew, who
had arrested me and that he, a Jew, would be the cause of my eventual
destruction which would inevitably occur.
... My cell became overcrowded by the next day. Twelve people were placed
in it on a bare wooden floor. ... The vast majority of prisoners were, of
course, Poles. There was an army officer, a police inspector, a uniformed
lieutenant from the reserves who was a lawyer by profession from Lodz, a
judge of the district court, a railway worker, a student from the
Polytechnic University, and a student from the Higher School of Foreign
Trade. A similar make-up of people, as I later learned, was found
in the other cells: judges, policemen, captured army officers, social
activists, workers, students. All of them, like I, had been arrested based
on denunciations by communists, for the most part Jews.
Toward the end of September 1939,
Zygmunt Winter, a Jewish
colleague from high school days, brought the
NKVD
to apprehend Zdzislaw
Zakrzewski,
an activist in the All-Poland Youth (Mlodziez Wszechpolska)
organization at the Lwow Polytechnic University. Not finding him at home,
the NKVD arrested Zakrzewski's father, Wilhelm, an officer of the Polish
State Police, who was soon executed. Zakrzewski's mother and sister were
later deported to Kazakhstan, where his mother perished. Zdzislaw
Zakrzewski, together with a group of colleagues who made their way to the
Polish army in France, had several run-ins with armed "revolutionary
committees", composed of Jews and Ukrainians in Jagielnica and a village
near Sniatyn, from which they managed to extricate themselves.
Edward Trznadel, a Polish official, who had taken
refuge in Lwow, was apprehended by some Jewish communists from Olkusz.
They took him to the commissariat and denounced him as their persecutor.
Fortunately for Trznadel, after being interrogated, he was released.
Ironically, Trznadel had been on good terms with the Jewish community in
Olkusz, where he served as deputy county supervisor (starosta) and was
even called on to mediate disputes within that community.
There are numerous similar examples from Lwow, where Poles continued to be
arrested throughout the Soviet occupation.
A Polish woman saw her husband, a
doctor of gentry origin, killed in their home by Jews.
In the fall of 1940, Stanislaw Schultz, a
40-year-old Pole, who had been excused from active military service for
health reasons, was denounced as a Polish officer by a Jewish neighbour.
He was exiled to hard labour in eastern Siberia and was not heard of
again. Michal Byczyszyn was arrested on the street in 1941 by Jewish
communists. Jewish students of Prof. Zdzislaw Zygulski advised him that he
had been spared in their denunciation of their fellow Polish students,
alleged "anti-Semites". Zygulski thereby escaped arrest by the NKVD.
Many accounts also identify
local Jews acting as jailers and interrogators
throughout Eastern
Poland
already during these early days of the occupation, in towns
like Rowne, Wlodzimierz Wolynski, Hrubieszow, Grodno, Lwow, Augustow,
and others.
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In Kolomyja, a Polish prisoner recalls:
... In a cell for six people, they packed thirty-six
people. By a strange coincidence Wladek [Wladyslaw Traczuk] found himself
in the company of policemen from his town of Gwozdziec. Among them were
Zalewski, Wolno, Gosztyla and Klincza. Seeing the emaciated Wladek, one of
them gave him a little bread and another a spoonful of soup. They were
thus able to nourish him somewhat. These policemen were interrogated every
night. After their ordeal they returned to their cell staggering on their
feet, all mangled and bloody.
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Jews and Ukrainians whom we
recognized often passed down the corridors. They would stop in front
of the cell, point at someone with their finger, and tell the
NKVD
officer who accompanied them: 'That's the one'. After such a
visit the fingered victim was treated especially badly. Zalewski and
Klincza were beaten the most.
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... Few of them managed to leave that prison alive.
Witold Sagajllo, an officer in the Polish Navy, who was caught by the
Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland, recalled that "nearly every commissar"
he had the misfortune to meet, was a Jew.
POLISH-JEWISH RELATIONS IN SOVIET-OCCUPIED EASTERN POLAND, 1939-1941
POLAND'S ETHNIC MINORITIES AND THE NAZI-SOVIET OCCUPATION OF POLAND
POLAND - WWII
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Your photograph captioned "Jews Killed Town Officials" is actually a photograph of the execution of former Prime Minister Ion Antonescu and several other officials of the Romanian wartime regime. They were tried in 1945 for war crimes and four of the accused were executed in Romania: Ion Antonescu, Mihai Antonescu, C. Z. Vasiliu, and Gheorghe Alexianu. There is a second photograph of this. See
ReplyDeleteThe photograph with caption "NKVD ship Poles to Siberia" is actually : A transport of Jews from Hungary arrives at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Poland, May 1944.
ReplyDeleteThe photograph with caption "Polish Jews Were Ecstatic When Russians Occupied Poland " is actually : "Members of Armée Juive dance a horah in their training camp in the Alps."
ReplyDeleteThe photograph beside a section entitled "The Bandits Took Charge" is actually a Portrait of Palestinian Jewish parachutist Peretz Goldstein. Goldstein was captured after being dropped into Yugoslavia. He was later sent to the Oranienburg concentration camp, where he perished.
ReplyDeleteThe photograph beside a section entitled "Vicious Jews Killed A Polish Countess " is actually a photograph of Christine Granville - the favourite spy of Winston Churchill. She was a native of Poland who was born Krystyna Skarbek. She survived the war and was mmurdered in 1951 by a jealous lover.
ReplyDeleteThe photograph beside a section entitled "Killed Catholic Priests" is actually a photograph of Prince August Czartoryski who became a priest in 1892, but died in 1893 of TB aged 34.
ReplyDeleteThe defaced photograph naming a woman as "Josielewicz " is actually a photograph of Tsila Botvinnik, a Jewish partisan active in the Minsk ghetto underground against the Germans. Minsk, Soviet Union, between 1941 and 1944.
ReplyDeleteThe photograph captioned "Jews Executed Polish Police " is actually a photograph of Jewish policemen that had been executed by the SS during the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
ReplyDeleteThe photograph captioned "From Clerk to Head of the Militia " is actually a doctored photograph of Berel Lemel. His nose has been changed. He is wearing a Jewish armband. Berel Lemel was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair in Zarki, who became involved with the agricultural collective established by fellow movement members from Warsaw. He was later killed by Polish partisans. 1941 - 1942 . Original photograph is
ReplyDeleteSee http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1060259
ReplyDeleteThe photograph captioned "From Store Clerk To Local Commissar " is actually a doctored photograph of Julek Anderman. Using the assumed name, Julek Kozlowski, Julek was an officer in the Polish underground army. He was killed in the Warsaw uprising of August 1944.. Original photograph is http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa26769
ReplyDeleteThe photograph of a house captioned "Jews Killed And Then took Estates " is actually a photograph of a house now demolished in the USA, at Ocean Springs, Jackson County, Mississippi.
ReplyDeleteAnother doctored photograph captioned "From Students To Election Supervisors" is actually a photograph of Sephardic Jews that lived in Monastir, Macedonia. Pictured is Victoria and Isak Assael, the daughter and son of Shabetai Assael. They were students and lived at Sremska 9 in Bitola.
ReplyDeleteThe photograph captioned "College Students Become Judge And Jury" is another photograph of the execution of Marshall Ion Antonescu, former dictator of Romania (1940-1944) at the Fort Jilava prison in a suburb of Bucharest.
ReplyDeleteThe photograph captioned "Hangings In The Town Square" shows the same execution of Mosche Kogan and Wolf Kieper in the German-Occupied Ukraine, August 1941. The local German army commander ordered the arrest of more than 400 Jewish men. The 400 Jews arrested by the army were made to watch the hanging and afterwards were taken to the Pferdefriedhof (horse cemetery) outside Zhitomir where they were shot.
ReplyDeleteThe photograph captioned "They Emerged Like Dormant Locusts" shows Pro-Soviet partisans, part of the Polish People's Army (AL), during a visit from General "Rola" Zymierski (standing, third from left) in German-occupied Poland at Parczew Forest, 1943. The partisans included Jews, and they had to withstand not only the Nazis and anti-Jewish Polish fighters, but also Polish military men and Polish farmers intent on murdering Jews.
ReplyDeleteThe photograph captioned "In Kalusz, the invading Soviet army was greeted boisterously" is actually dated Aug 1968 and is from Prague, Czechoslovakia, showing emotional scenes as crowds gather after the Russian invasion.
ReplyDeleteThe photograph under the heading "In Gwozdziec" actually dates from 1919 and is a picture of Workers in Italy. During Biennio Rosso, "two red years", in Italy 1919-1920, Working-class militancy was on the rise and culminated in half a million workers occupying their factories and taking them over. The derailing and defeat of the movement helped usher in fascism..
ReplyDeleteWith respect, it looks like you've cut and pasted an article published by a white supremacist. They haven't bothered to check the sources and neither have you. Your blog is headed with words such as Peace, not war, friend, not enemy. If you really want this and wish to be a man of peace you shouldn't be publishing these things. They were/are designed to incite hate. A man of God does not spread lies.
ReplyDelete